South Korea, Japan, China to meet after three years of chilled ties

World Today

South Korea’s Deputy Minister for Political Affairs Lee Kyung-soo, center, leads Japan’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Shinsuke Sugiyama, left, and China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Liu Zhenmin during the 10th Trilateral Senior Foreign Affairs Official’s Consultation, at a hotel in central Seoul, South Korea Wednesday, March 11, 2015. The foreign ministers of each country will meet for the first time in three years on Saturday. (AP Photo/Kim Hong-Ji, Pool)
Published March 17, 2015 at 12:50 PM
Updated March 23, 2015 at 11:43 AM

The foreign ministers of South Korea, China and Japan will meet on Saturday for the first time in nearly three years in a bid to restore cooperation between the three Asian economic powers, South Korea’s foreign ministry said.

South Korea and China’s ties with Japan have chilled over what they view as Japan’s reluctance to properly atone for its wartime past. Both South Korea and China also have territorial disputes with Japan.

But ties between China and Japan have shown signs of warming over recent months and South Korea’s foreign ministry said senior officials from the three countries had met recently and the foreign ministers aimed to put trilateral cooperation back on track at their talks in Seoul.

“The meeting is the first in about three years since April 2012 and is expected to lay the foundation for restoring a mechanism for three-country cooperation,” the Korean foreign ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

Report from Reuters.